While programming in JavaScript, I have been doing this alot:

// get element
const elem = document.get...

// check if element exists
if (elem) {
  // do anything with the element
}

Because, otherwise, I would be getting errors when trying to act uppon that element if it didn't exist.

My question is, should I use a single try catch to avoid always be checking if the element exists? Like in this example:

// get element
const elem = document.get...

if (elem) {
  // get parent
  const parent = elem.parentElement;
  if (parent) {
    // get children of parent with class 'center'
    const center_elem = parent.getElementsByClassName...
    if (center_elem) {
      center_elem.style.backgroundColor = "white";
    }
  }
}

Instead of having these nested ifs, should I do the following?

try {
  const elem = document.get...
  const parent = elem.parentElement;
  const center_elem = parent.getElementsByClassName...
  center_elem.style.backgroundColor = "white";
}
catch (e) {
  // ignore the errors because I only wanted the code above to happen when the elements existed anyway
}